together with the use of Sanskrit, will guard us against the error of Sir William Jones, who supposed that "the Indian theatre would fill as many volumes as that of any nation in ancient or modern Europe." While the list of dramatic pieces composed by Chinese dramatists of the Youen dynasty reaches a total of five hundred and sixty-four, it is doubtful whether all the Sanskrit plays to be found, together with those mentioned by writers on the drama, amount to more than sixty. Only three plays are attributed to each of the great Indian dramatists, Bhavabhúti and Kálidása—a number to be contrasted not merely with the two hundred and sixty comedies attributed to Antiphanes or the two thousand plays of Lope de Vega, but with the substantial dramatic contributions of Aristophanes, Plautus, or Shakspere. But, though the number of Indian plays is small, they supplied, in the decay of dramatic art, a rich field for that verbal criticism in which Oriental intellect delights. System-mongers, taking the place of dramatic poets, laid down a technique and dogmatical precepts, and "set themselves to classify plays, persons, and passions until they wove a complicated web out of very spider-like materials." Seeking no initiation in the mysteries of this criticism, we shall now turn to the main characteristics already noticed as common to the Indian epics and the Indian drama—the prominence of physical Nature and the disregard of "the unities."
§ 89. Although the prominence of Nature in the Indian drama is by no means to be estimated solely from descriptive passages, the constant use of similes and figures taken from Nature's life really supplying more convincing evidences of this prominence than any number of such passages, it is easier to select some of the latter than to give the reader any idea of that perfect mosaic of
